Peace is when the economy improves. When people are prosperous, and the agricultural sector is developed, and the water from the reservoir is diverted here [â¦].
Focus Group Discussion (fgd) with Organisasi Petani Wongsorejo Banyuwangi/opwb and Organisasi Petani Perempuan Wongsorejo Banyuwangi/op2wb, February 2017
At the time, see, the movement only involved men. The women, if they wanted to get involved, they could. They werenât really needed, and theyâd only come if needed. Bu sk said to the women ⦠said they were needed when the shooting occurred. [â¦] After that we stayed involved. The men werenât mobilised, so it was the women who remained.
Interview with sk, November 20161
1 Introduction
Since the end of the Suharto regime in Indonesia, the residents of Wongsorejo, a subdistrict in the Regency of Banyuwangi in East Java, have protested against the expropriation of their land. In the 1980s, the regime gave land rights to pt Wongsorejo, an Indonesian company under Chinese ownership, to develop a kapok plantation, and in 2015 the Banyuwangi Regency extended these rights to allow the company to build an industrial estate.2 The rationale for the government in both instances was to enlist the private sector for development purposes. From the perspective of local farmers however, the land in question belongs to the families of the ca 11,000 residents of Wongsorejo. Although few have titles certifying ownership, their ancestors cleared the land and their families have worked it for generations. From their perspective, the governmentâs land grab is patently unjustânot least because it has not delivered the economic prosperity promised and has led to a diversion of water for tourism. Building peace in Wongsorejo means building prosperity; and for the farmers prosperity requires land and redressing unjust land grabbing, as implied in the first quote above.
Men led the farmersâ protest initially. But, as the second quote above makes clear, women are its main protagonists today. This is surprising since the
Feminist peace researchers tend to reject the idea that war and peace stand in opposition and are mutually exclusive. They focus instead on the way violence is pervasive in societies as they reproduce inequalities, exclusions and othering. Thus, from the perspective of the marginalised, violence is experienced every day, whether in the form of economic insecurity and hunger, crime and domestic violence, or misrecognition and epistemic violence (Wibben et al., 2019). Relatedly, such scholarship recognises that advantage, inequalities and oppression are often contested, and thus that conflict is an integral part of society; as Shinko (2008, 487) reminds us with Foucault (1979), politics is a continuation of war by other means. As a result, she argues, peace is always âagonisticâ: because âpeace, or what is referred to as peace, is rent with subordination, repression, and domination, where the strong marshal all of their force to institutionalise, legitimate, and instantiate a system of order that will maintain their strategic position of privilegeâ, struggle is an integral aspect of âthe war/peace nexusâ (Shinko, 2008, 488). Such struggle is a crucial site for producing (sometimes begrudging) respect and recognition across difference. We read the anti-land grab protests in East Java as a performance of agonistic peace that achieves this kind of recognition of the standpoints of the subordinate. Peacebuilding is thus reformulated as a type of political practice geared towards gaining recognition across difference, an ongoing contestation of power relations, including struggles for social justice (Richmond, 2013). The concept of citizenship can usefully be appropriated for such an understanding of peacebuilding. Rather than simply meaning political participation, citizenship practices become everyday enactments that centre antagonisms and passion (van Klinken and Berenschot, 2018).
Gender is deeply imbricated in such peacebuilding or âdissident citizenshipâ (Sparks, 2016). As outlined in the introduction to this volume, gender informs stereotypes that circumscribe possible agency, offers scripts to enact identities, and sometimes constitutes a strategic resource for change. The war/peace binary itself is hardly thinkable without gender. It normalises the stereotypical
In the following we explore womenâs shifting enactments of citizenship in the anti-land grab protests in Wongsorejo, the role that gender has play in this shift, the effects of this on society, and the kind of peace it has helped bring into being. We first situate the protests in Indonesian history, tracing their origins in the politics of Suhartoâs New Order regime and the post-Suharto (âReformasiâ) era. We then show how women and men have participated in the land struggles and the way gender has informed their activism. We document how women appropriated a gender stereotype from the Suharto era, that is âIbuismâ, to legitimate their political agency. While they initially saw their activism as supplementary to that of men, the gender division of protests shifted over time as the movement strategically deployed women to flaunt femininity in order to pre-empt violence from security forces. The movement thus employed gender as a resource and thus opened the door to giving women the lead. Their identities changed in the process, allowing women farmers to establish themselves as rights-bearing citizens and as skilled politicians who participated in political activism in the Regency and beyond. In this way, their struggle over land rights reconfigured the meaning of peace as it brought into view the concerns and priorities of their communities from the perspective of the feminised margins.
Our analysis draws on 14 interviews and two focus group discussions (fgds) conducted between November 2016 and February 2017 in the hamlet of Bongkoran in Wongsorejo,3 where the land dispute has been centred since 2012. Interviewees included farmers, members of the male and female branches of the farmers organisation Organisasi Petani Wongsorejo Banyuwangi (opwb
2 Land Struggle, Gender and Reformasi
The end of Suhartoâs New Order regime (1966 to 1998) spawned an avalanche of conflicts in Indonesia. These included not only communal conflicts and insurgencies, such as those in Aceh, East Timor and Maluku, but also conflicts over land. Many trace the origins of Indonesian land conflicts back to the 1960 Basic Agrarian Law (bal). In order to foster national unity while facilitating development, the bal overruled customary adat law, which varies by community, and put all land under the control of the state (Bedner and Arizona, 2019). The Suharto regime used the law to advance export-oriented economic policies, including the establishment of plantations and the vast exploitation of natural resources. It ruthlessly appropriated untitled lands without obtaining the consent of the local communities and without paying compensation (Fitzpatrick, 2007, 137).
Not surprisingly, this created massive grievances. However, resistance to the governmentâs land grabs risked accusations of communist sympathies and invited violent repression. The regime had risen to power following the failed 30 September Movement coup in 1965, which it blamed on the Communist Party of Indonesia. Land was one of the issues entangled in the politics of the subsequent purge, as the Indonesian Communist Party had advocated for land reform, and many of its members were small farmers who opposed the rural landholding elite. Labelling people communists became a government tactic to criminalise the opposition, and the New Order regime now framed all forms of protests by farmers as communist efforts to regain power (Larasati, 2019, 2).
Not surprisingly, when the Indonesian political system opened up and free expression became possible once more, people organised and protested against their loss of land. The Reformasi era saw a mushrooming of peasant movements, civil society and feminist and environmentalist organisations (Candraningrum, 2018; Robinson, 2018). It also saw the establishment of Legal Aid Centres whose programmes support marginal groups and communities
This scenario also plays out in Banyuwangi, where the local governmentâs response to the new land policies has been slow (Subandio, 2018). The district has become a poster child for successful economic development with a focus on local industry and tourism (taking advantage of its proximity to Bali). In 2019, at the commemoration of its twenty-third year of regional autonomy, Banyuwangi received the appreciation of the Minister of Internal Affairs for its outstanding performance in accelerating development (Fanani, 2019). In the meantime, struggles over land rights continue not only in Wongsorejo, but also in other parts of the district; and they are increasingly overlaid with struggles to preserve the environment.
As elsewhere, state building in Indonesia has been gendered. The New Order government promoted an ideology of a gendered separation of public and private spheres, with public activities reserved for men and women structurally placed in the domestic sphere (Suryakusuma, 1988; Wieringa, 2001). In what Suryakusuma has termed âstate Ibuismâ, women were constructed as mothers for the sake of national development in support of male power. Wieringa explains the shift from Sukarnoâs early post-independence state, when women were seen as independence fighters, to the New Order: âThe âwomanâ was no longer defined as a comrade in the revolutionary struggle; under the New
The structures created by the Suharto regime were broken down during the Reformasi era, and with them state-sponsored Ibuism. But the figure of the mother proved powerful in the protests that led to the overthrow of the New Order regime, motivating womenâs opposition and resonating among the disgruntled (Robinson, 2009). In addition, cultural and religious understandings of motherhood as powerful continue to thrive, often among women who organise in a context of Islamic revival, sometimes in tension with and sometimes in support of a politics of gender equality and womenâs empowerment (Jauhola, 2013b; Rinaldo, 2013b). We read the protest of women in Wongsorejo in the light of such constructions; understandings of motherhood circumscribe their struggles, as do languages of equality and rights. They limit and open up different modes of agency, offer strategic resources for activism, and shape a distinctive vision of peace involving prosperity, justice and environmental preservation.
3 Ibuism as Resistance
In the 1980s, pt Wongsorejo was granted usage rights over 603 hectares of land, which it used to cultivate kapok plants; 220 hectares of this land was taken from farmers. In the 1970s, soldiers and village administrators had coerced farmers into signing contracts (using their fingerprints) that stated that they approved the transfer of land to pt Wongsorejo. Those who refused to give their approval were branded communists. But despite experiencing significant violence at the hands of local strong men and security officers, the farmers were unwilling to abandon the land that they and their ancestors had worked. In 1999, after the collapse of the New Order regime, residents of Wongsorejo organised in the Farmersâ Organisation of Wongsorejo, Banyuwangi (opwb) to reclaim their land. With a membership of some 1,000 in its early days, the opwb began to organise protests, including confrontations with the village chief and demonstrations before parliament (Fatimah, 2019, 3). It received support in its struggle from Surabaya Legal Aidand the Association of East Java Farmers.
df:So, Ibu, from the beginning, when did you start joining in with the opwbâs activities?sm:Me, ⦠I donât know the year. I never went to school, but if there are any activities, Iâll take part.df:So from the beginning?sm:Interview with sm, November 2016Yes, from the beginning.
yl:Bu, you joined the struggle from the very beginning?ls:Me, before I married my husband, I was already part of the struggle. So, the struggle started in 1999, if Iâm not mistaken, and I married in 2000.yl:Oh, so you were already involved when you married?ls:Interview with ls, November 2016Yes. In fact, my husband was already taking part. When the shooting happened, I was pregnant with my first daughter. I was first ⦠when the shooting happened, with Mas tk, that was in front of my house. I was with the women, with Bu sk, and she was with me. Pregnant too.
Thus the women jointly with each other participated in protest activities. Motherhood and pregnancy were far from a hindrance; indeed, motherhood was a motivator and gave womenâs activism legitimacy. In Java, kinship is traced bilaterally, and it is customary for women to inherit and thus own land. While Islamic law prescribes that women inherit a percentage, though less than men, families often divide the land equally between sons and daughters according to customary practice; indeed, the eldest sister sometimes inherits more than the younger brothers (Robinson, 2009, 23). As part owners, women farmers are motivated to protect the land. Having land allows them to meet the everyday needs of their families, such as providing food and water, both of which are considered womenâs responsibility.
A number of officials came, and the lands were all measured, Mbak. A lot of them came ⦠see, we should have been given a bit. We didnât want it. Yeah, didnât want it. Our people didnât want it. What would we eat? Me, I didnât go to school. The smart people said, âItâs okay for the government to take the landâ. Well, what would the government have the children eat? ⦠Iâd never gone to school, and I answered like this: âIâm one of the governmentâs children too. What would I eat?â There were a lot of people facing difficult times, but no they only focused on that.
Interview with sl, November 2016
sl spoke from her role as a mother (âwhat would the government have the children eat?â), but also called in the governmentâs responsibility (âIâm one of the governmentâs children too. What would I eat?â). Illiterate, she saw no future for her in jobs outside farming and was loath to give up the security provided by the land. What drives her argument is familial commitments: as she has a responsibility to feed her family as mother and wife, so the governmentâas a fatherâshould have a responsibility to ensure she can fulfil this responsibility.
sk:Mbah na all of a sudden came to the house, because she didnât have any work ⦠nothing much. She said to me that sheâd bought some poison for the randu trees.6 It wasnât enough ⦠then I decided to use my husbandâs. I gave her a litre and I said, âNo need to payâ. And at the time, see, I had a three-month-old baby. So I apologised to Mbah na. I couldnât go. I was responsible, had to work here. Bu sk answered,âYeah, let the women be responsible, not the menâ. So, if the women went, and there were company supervisors, they would be careful. And my husband suddenly came out of the house and said, âWhereâs my weed killer?â I answered, âIt was taken by one of my friends to treat rootsâ. Even though Iâd taken it myself. But when I went to the market, I bought some more. So I asked some friends and discussed things with people I could trust. yl:Right, because it was a secret, Bu?sk:Interview with sk, November 2016Yes, a secret. And after that, I said to my friends that, if we wanted to poison some plants, we should find plants that hadnât been contested [that is, plants on land allocated to the company that had not been contested]. Like the one on my familyâs land, thereâd been no cases. That was the first one I wanted them to poison. Then we went to other plantations, taking turns.
sm:Interview with sm, November 2016The important thing is that, if anything happens, we can go without our husbands knowing. At the time, Bu sn was in the field, very pregnant. If Iâm not mistaken, she was almost nine months along. And her husband didnât know [that she was going out]. At the time, I was working the green beans ⦠I wanted to know what the police and mobile brigade were like. So I left the beans, then I found out that Bu sn had been fighting with the police and the mobile brigade.
Indeed, women also did not shy away from violence. One of our interviewees recounted an incident where women beat security staff: âI mean, we were protecting ourselves. At first, the ones who beat them were actually the women. Like, Mbah na, her daughter Mbak su and then the thug named ma.â (Interview with ls, November 2016).
yl: So now there are no more kapok plants left?sk:Maybe theyâre tired, Bu.yl:Hehehehehe ⦠tired of fighting against sk.ya:Here [in Bongkoran] there are none left.sk:fgd with the opwb and op2wb, February 2017Replaced by mangoes, by what have you, after the women here â¦
sk thus gives credit to the women of Wongsorejo for having defeated the plantation. Their participation in the protest after 1998 reflected both continuity and a break in the New Order gender division of labour that saw womenâs place as being at home. They assumed a subversive role in the conflictâjustified by their familial role of ensuring that their children can eatâyet kept their most radical activities hidden from the men. They supported the goal and the actions of the opwb, but also showed independent agency through enactments of motherhood. In this way, they appropriated Ibuism and changed its meaning so that it allowed them to perform protests and make their voices heard.
4 Women in the LeadâNew Gender Divisions of Protest
The women of Wongsorejo may have killed the plantation, but they did not defeat the company. pt Wongsorejoâs land usage rights ended in 2012, but the Banyuwangi Regency gave the company building-usage rights two years later. The plan was to build an industrial estate, again partially on contested lands.7 Although there was an effort at mediation (as referenced earlier, farmers were offered 60 hectares of the 220 they claimed), and although the company promised to create 70,000 new jobs, farmers did not give in (Sholahudin, Siahaan and Wiratraman, 2020, 428). They feared not only the loss of their livelihoods, but also that the new industry would have detrimental ecological effects and negatively impact soil fertility (Arifianto, 2018). The plans thus revived the conflict
The idea that women should move to the front is familiar from other movements that take advantage of constructions of women as needing protection to deter the violence of security forces. Such instrumentalisation has been criticised (Doss, Summerfield and Tsikata, 2014; Lamb et al., 2017; Park and Maffii, 2017) though some have questioned the characterisation of women as pawns without agency (Joshi, 2020). In Wongsorejo activists seemed to have learned from movements outside the region, in particular from Rembang. But they also drew lessons from their encounters with security forces during the violent clashes of 2001. As sk, one of the op2wb leaders recalled, after the shooting, âThe son of Bu snâs sibling was captured and brought into the mobile brigadeâs vehicle. Her sister came and told the mobile brigade to let the kid go. And the mobile brigade, he said, âYouâre lucky youâre a woman. If you werenât a woman, Iâd shoot you.â (Interview with sk, November 2016).
And sk confirmed that the mobile brigades acted differently towards women and men: âYes, thereâd surely be violenceâ if the brigades faced men.
Interview with su, November 2016
We have to face a lot of things, violence, and then we have had our heads broken, beaten, rivers of blood. ⦠We are all tired of that. Kidnapping is often done too. And so problems should be resolved with a good strategy or approach. For that, using women is one strategy for resolving problems and avoiding violence.
bo:Yes. Alhamdulillah, since we established op2wb, there havenât been any people going in and out of prison.wu:Why not, Bu?bo:Yes, that is it. If the men were meeting the men, theyâd end up fighting.wu:And then be sent to prison? So after op2wb was established, thereâs been nobody else sent to prison?bo:fgd with the opwb and op2wb, February 2017Alhamdulillah. Because after that the women were in the front.
Iâve said to Mas ya ⦠Mas, these women, their goal is to meet once a week. That is op2wb itself. Mas, I want to organise the women. But I didnât make it once a week. Maybe I am having too much trouble myself. I made the meetings once a month, but during the day. If it were night, I couldnât come. See, in the field I have trouble. So itâs in the day. Mas ya said, âThatâs betterâ.
Interview with li, November 2016
Before, there were routine funds, but it didnât work because we werenât careful. After that, because things kept developing, the issues didnât reduce in number but increased. In the end, we gave in. We surrendered the funding issues to the women. Alhamdulillah, they have helped us a lot. Especially in our other activities. We were helped a lot by the women.
fgd with the opwb and op2wb, February 2017
See, now, the budget problems can be overcome, for the women. Me, I use the knowledge I got from Bu gu [one of the women members of the op2wb], the knowledge from her. At first Bu gu said, âWhy is the budget held wholly by the women?â Because the needs, the women know them. If we have any money left over, we know the money, and we can put something aside. But the men, theyâll ask the women for money. And then if the women donât know their finances, and there are other needs, then there will be fighting in the family. Some will get like this over funds.
After thinking about it ⦠well, yes, thatâs how it was. Me, before, when the money was still handled by my husband, it wasnât all 100 per cent there. âWhat other money is there?â Thatâs how it is. Iâll admit it. And now, after we know how things are, and the women know it ⦠in a month, weâll put aside 5,000 rupiah [usd 0.38] of our shopping money. Thatâs the key. See, the men, they feel offended. They donât trust us, the men. The Madurese, they are easily emotional. Me, I said, âPak, donât misunderstand us. None of us are belittling the fight youâve undertaken. Because op2wp, see, the ones who started things and established the group, itâs
Interview with li, November 2016you. And your fight, itâll never be forgotten by op2wb. In fact, you should be controlling us.â Thatâs what I said. After that, bit by bit, they became aware of the need for a good budget.
The quote is remarkable for how easily it shifts between references to family budgets and the funds of the organisation. Taking charge of the organisationâs budget went hand-in-hand with being in charge of the household budget. It also shows that womenâs taking over of the reins did not proceed without conflict, and li found it necessary to appease the men, evoking their superior status in the family as father (âpakâ), and telling them that their fight will not be forgotten and that âIn fact, you should be controlling usâ. The fact that control of the finances was a matter of conflict indicates that it also involved relations of power. Indeed, we found both, jealousies and men supporting womenâs leadership in the organisation.
df:Those meetings are at night usually, right?sm:Yes, at night.df:And how does your husband take it?sm:He usually waits at home. The children, sons and daughters, and the in-laws, they join me. Thereâs nothing at night.df:How does your husband feel? He has no objections to you taking part in such activities?sm:Sometimes he comes here too.â¦df:Has he ever complained, Bu, that you take part in the demonstrations? That it disturbs the cooking and the like.sm:That stuff ⦠for a bit I wonât clean for a while. The important thing is that I cook, and things are ready, and then we have breakfast. If we need to pack something to go, we do. Me, itâs like that, Mbak.df:So cooking is important. Cleaning can wait.sm:Right, Mbak.df:And your husband doesnât protest?sm:Interview with sm, November 2016No. See, we work together. We understand each other.
li:If the kentongan9 had already sounded, we wouldnât feel like eating. So weâd be on the road, weâd go. Sometimes, Bapak, heâd know that I hadnât had breakfast so heâd buy some bread before coming home.yl:He brought it there?li:Yes.yl:And did the other men do that too?li:Interview with li, November 2016Yes. The following day, if there was the opportunity, theyâd expect that theyâd have to come ⦠theyâd bring some things. [â¦]
Creating a new organisation and putting women in the front thus generated a change in gender divisions of protest. We argue that this was not simply a matter of men instrumentalising women for their own purposes; instead, both women and men strategically deployed constructions of women as weak and needing protection to pre-empt violence from the security forces. This use of gender as a resource for activism had identity effects: it entailed a political empowerment of women, paired with a gain in status in the household. In the following, we read their activism as performing active citizenship and thus constructing a more inclusive peace in Banyuwangi, in which those intersectionally marginalised along the axes of gender and class have a role to play.
5 Organising Gives Us PassionâFrom Empowerment to Citizenship
The political empowerment of the women activists of Wongsorejo is significant not only at the personal and household levels. Our understanding of peace as agonistic leads us to suggest that their leadership contributes to the enactment of a particular kind of peace, one that recognises their claims even if it does not fulfil them. Another way of framing the issue is to suggest that the protests of women in Wongsorejo empower them to perform citizenship at the level of the everyday (van Klinken and Berenschot, 2018). It is possible to identify in the narratives of the women two aspects of such empowermentâone signalling personal bravery, the other adopting an understanding of rights-bearing citizens in a changed polity.
df:opwb and op2wb, what benefits have these organisations offered?sm:Yeah, theyâve given us the passion.df:I mean, since these organisations were established ⦠Youâve been involved from before. Are women more active now, since the establishment of op2wb? Has there been a change, or has it remained the same?sm:Interview with sm, November 2016Yes, thereâs been a change. Iâm not afraid of anything. We can overcome things together.
Van Klinken and Berenschot (2018) advocate a re-conceptualisation of citizenship that appreciates the passion and antagonism involved in the political. sm tells us here that organisations are crucial to thisââtheyâve given us the passionâ, that is, the motivation to face danger in order to change things, to overcome fear.
sm:When we demonstrated at parliament, I took part. Joined when we went to the regent too. To the house of the village chief too. I just joined in then.df:And if you joined, did you just come physically, or did you talk too?Interview with sm, November 2016sm: Yeah, I also talked, spontaneously. Like, âPak, what will the fate of the farmers be? Nothing to eat ⦠poor.â And then the official asked âWhy?â and Bu se added, âYeah, theyâre hungry, Pak. Thereâs nothing to eat.â Like that, Mbak.
Like, in Yogya, I was teased by Mas go. ⦠I didnât know that it was a press conference. It turned out that there were a lot of reporters and a press conference. The ones from Kalimantan, they were accompanied by the legal body. And then from ntt [Nusa Tenggara Timur (East Nusa Tenggara)] they were supported by Mbak it, and then from Kendal they were also supported ⦠but we from Wongsorejo, where was Mas go? Even though things were ready to begin. And then the conference began, and they were all supported by their own legal organisations, and the group from Wongsorejo was left all alone. I couldnât do anything. I was stiff. I read whatever I could. Me, I tried to answer what I could. Over there, we all forgot that we werenât sure. ⦠I answered as I could. Mbak wi said, âOh My God! What is all this ⦠alright, answer.â I got hot and cold. âMas ag, where is Mas go?â âI donât know where.â The first one to speak was from East Nusa Tenggara, and then the second was from Kalimantan. The third one was from Wongsorejo. Oh, by Allah ⦠but Alhamdulillah, what I talked about was what had happened. So after the conference was over, Mas go was clapping his hands. What did he want? âIâve succeeded, Bu, in guiding you,â Mas go said. âWhere were you? I was looking for you.â Mas ad laughed. âBu, you were already correct and proper in your speaking.â âThatâs what you say, Mas.â âNo. We have it recorded here, Bu,â Mas ag said. âBut oh, Pak, Iâm so afraid. You really know how to give us a lesson.â Thatâs what I said. Iâd told Mas go that I couldnât speak. But me, I had no idea what I was talking about. I forgot what I said. Like I was unaware. I was a witness, Bu. I was surprised. Just look at it.
Interview with li, November 2016
Overcoming fear in this context meant something quite different to overcoming fear in the face of police violence. Being part of an organisation, encouraged by other members, and tutored by supporters, li ended up discovering
li:Mas he came before the organisation was established. In 1999 he was already here.yl:How important has his presence been, Bu?li:Interview with li, November 2016Very important, because Mas he, he can share ⦠we can expand our network, and from the beginning it was Mas he who helped us develop our network. We met our friends, at the very first, through Mas he. ⦠Before, every time something happened heâd come. But now, he said this ⦠Every time there are problems, he relies on me, he can only depend on me. And what was his message ⦠to not depend too much on him.
The training, the paralegal training. See, we have never known the different forms ⦠once a fight, always a fight. And from before, we hadnât had a team for security, for records, for negotiations, or a camera team. Since then, some of the men have brought cameras and they have been used to it. And the records team, we hadnât had it, but with training we have started to understand.
Interview with li, November 2016
sm:⦠no matter what, Iâve got rights. This is the land where I was born, which I must defend for my children and grandchildren. If not, what will my grandchildren have in the future?df:⦠Bu, earlier you said that youâre not afraid because you have rights. Ibu sm, where did you learn that you have rights?sm:I learned it from my parents, my grandfather, and my father, all of whom said that.df:What did your father say then?sm:This is your birth land. This is where the land was cleared before, and where death will come.df:So youâve been here for generations?sm:Yes, over generations.df:Did you also take part in any training sessions? Or discussions with Pak he?sm:Interview with sm, November 2016Owwwh. Just considered it ⦠see, I didnât go to school, so I canât speak Indonesian. So I just give passion to the youths. âCome on, child. You must fight for your future.â I only give that spirit to the young ones. I only help as I can, and Iâm always involved.
sm knows that she has rights. ngo discourse may or may not have informed smâs arguments, but she defines her struggles through the language of rights. These are not rights bestowed by formal government law, but ones that come from having been born on the land. Her rights claims come âfrom my parents, my grandfather and my fatherâ, who taught her that âthis is your birth landâ. In other words, sm makes her argument drawing on customary law by which those who clear the land own the land (compare Bedner and Arizona, 2019). She is not alone in doing so. When we asked people in our focus group discussion whether anybody in the village opposed their struggle, they told us that, of about 1,000, âat most there are only four people against itâ (fgd with op2wb, 24 July 2018). Thus, we can assume that smâs attitude is widespread.
sm performs citizenship. The struggle has shaped how she perceives herself and her community in the context of the Indonesian state and the Banyuwangi Regency. Like the other women active in the Wongsorejo resistance, she emerges as a rights-bearing subject who has learned to speak the language of national politics and makes claims drawing on notions of rights. In addition, some women have become leaders with increased political efficacy, knowing
6 Conclusion
The anti-land grab activism of Wongsorejo tells the story of how social protest can anchor a different kind of peaceâone not defined by harmony, but one that allows for an expression of clashing interests and a recognition of differences. It also tells the story of how gender matters in peacebuilding and how it participates to construct different kinds of peace: from New Order Ibuism, to the powerful and activist motherhood of the Reformasi, to the emergence of female political leadership. In these different scenarios, gender is both strategically deployed for political ends and generates unintended effects. Thus, the Suharto regime consciously sought to order gender relations for developmental ends; similarly, the activists in Wongsorejo strategically deployed gender, though for very different endsâthat is, to manipulate the security forces. In both instances, gender constituted a strategic resource. In both instances too, the workings of gender spilled beyond their intended purposes: Ibuism came to support not just neo-liberal development, but also protests; and moving women to the front of protests not only made these less violent, it also served to empower women as political leaders. As activists, women are building new forms of peace that take note of their claims and enable their diverse (gendered) enactments of citizenship. Thus, peacebuilding emerges as a process rather than an outcome, as intrinsically political and as fighting violence in its multiple forms, from land grabs to poverty, and environmental pollution. Peacebuilding becomes dissident politics, and what makes such politics âpeacefulâ are values such as non-coercion and the ability to see not enemies that need to be destroyed but opponents that need engaging with.
We interpret the protests of women activists in Wongsorejo as enacting such peacebuilding. This has entailed establishing themselves as opponents by strategising with men (to put women in the front), but also having âpassionâ and being empowered to brave violence, having the courage to speak in public, applying their financial skills to maintaining the movement, and speaking the language of rights. It also has meant debating the uses of violence for movement activismâsomething that caused tension in the op2wb as some criticised Bu na for her violent tactics. As they have engaged in such politics, the women of Wongsorejo have participated in building a peace in which women
In the Javanese language, there are several ways to address people: bu or ibu is for elderly women or can also mean mother, pak is for elderly men or can mean father, mbah means grandmother or grandfather, mbok is for elderly women or can mean mother (usually from the lower classes), mbak means big sister, mas big brother. We keep these forms of address in our quotes from our interviews in order to convey a sense of the status of the individuals referred to.
Kapok, also known as Java cotton, is a fibre derived from the kapok tree and is used mostly for the stuffing of pillows and mattresses, but also for insulation.
Bongkoran is located between two villages in in the subdistrict of Wongsorejo, one with the same name as the subdistrict (so, Wongsorejo), the other called Alas Buluh.
They included, in addition to Wening Udasmoro (wu), Arifah Rahmawati (ar), Dati Fatimah (df), and Asnawan (A) and Yeni Lutfia (yl).
This has been richly documented in the case of oil palm cultivation in Kalimantan, where land grabs have enriched entrepreneurs, politicians and bureaucrats at the expense of smallholder farmers (Li, 2017; Julia and White, 2012). Not surprisingly, such violence has produced clashes between people defending their lands on the one side, and companies and the state on the other, with farmers in Kalimantan using economic strategies to resist industrial oil palm cultivation (Semedi and Prasetya, 2014).
Randu is another term for kapok.
According to the farmers we interviewed, the new industry would be vehicle spare parts. The Banyuwangi Regency Spatial Plan foresees an industrial area consisting of âbase metal industry, basic chemical industry, petroleum industry, machinery and equipment industry, wood, rubber, plastics, paper, food, and beverage industryâ (Sholahudin, Siahaan and Wiratraman, 2020, 426).
Organisations involved in the environmental movement in the area include, apart from the opwb and op2wb, the Movement of Wongsorejo Banyuwangi Youth Nature Lovers (Gerakan Pemuda Pecinta Alam Wongsorejo Banyuwangi, gampa) and the Community Forum for Environment Care (Forum Masyarakat Peduli Lingkungan, formalin) (Kholik, 2018).
A gong the villagers use to call people to assemble, and that has been used to signal the need to assemble for protest.
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